Can anyone become an outlier in their profession or hobby?

Discussion- Can anyone become an outlier

I recently read the book Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. I have mentioned this book in a previous post about giving up. I made reference to the 10,000 hours of practice to …

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Reflections on 5 years of organ lessons (Sept 2009 – Sept 2014)

Reflections on 5 years of Organ Lessons

September 2014 marks the 5th anniversary of when I started organ lessons.  5 years of taking lessons is a huge milestone. My initial goal when starting out was to become a church organist within 5 years. I have …

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The blessing of Finger Substitution

One of the first skills I learned when starting organ lessons was finger substitution. If you are not an organist, you may not know what finger substitution is. When I took piano lessons in my …

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What I’ve learned since deciding to take organ lessons

In early 2009, I decided that I wanted to take organ lessons. You can read about how I reached that decision here. After a couple of months of thinking about it, I decided to take action …

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5 reasons to listen to pipe organ music

Playing the pipe organ music has been called a lost art. Organists have been replaced in many churches by modern praise bands. However, the mighty Pipe Organ is still alive and there are thousands of …

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The one thing you need to become an organist or anything else as an adult

Persistence

Persistence. Persistence is the key to learning something new. Taking up something new as an adult can be a challenge. Here are some situations that you may need to persist through: Reaching your goal may …

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Making it more complicated than it needs to be – December 2013 Lesson

My hands on the swell manual

I met with Michael at the end of December for my last lesson of 2013. The lesson went well overall. I demonstrated improvement since my previous lesson which was an accomplishment itself. December was a …

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It’s not any harder to play it right – November 2013 Lesson

“It’s not any harder to play it right than to play it wrong.” Michael pointed this out at my organ lesson last Saturday. While playing “Nearer, Still Nearer”, I had some tempo issues. Unlike in …

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